The Canadian authorities facilitated the efforts made by the friends of the fugitives to provide this class such supplies as could be gathered in various quarters, and they entered into an arrangement with the mission-agent, the Rev. Hiram Wilson, to admit all supplies intended for the refugees free of customs-duty. Mr. E. Child, a mission-teacher, educated at Oneida Institute, New York, received many boxes of such goods at Toronto;[592] and at a hamlet called "the Corners," a few miles from Detroit, a Mr. Miller kept a depot for "fugitive goods." Supplies were also shipped to Detroit direct for transmission across the frontier.[593]
The circumstances attending the settlement of the refugees from slavery in Canada were favorable to their kindly reception by the native peoples. It was generally known that they had suffered many hardships on their journey northward, and that they usually came with nought but the unquenchable yearning for a liberty denied them by the United States. The movement to Canada had begun when the inter-lake portion of Ontario was largely an unsettled region; and indeed, during the period of the refugees' immigration, much of the interior was in the process of clearing. Moreover, the movement was one of small beginnings and gradual development. It brought into the country what it then needed—agricultural labor to open up government land and to help the native farmers.
In the elbow of land lying between Lake Ontario and Lake Erie, the fugitives were early received by the Indians under Chief Brant, having possessions along the Grand River and near Burlington Bay. Finding hospitality on these estates, the negroes not infrequently adopted the customs and mode of life of their benefactors, and remained among them.[594]
In the territory extending westward along the lake front white settlers were working their clearings, which were beginning to take on the aspect of cultivated farms. But farm hands were not plentiful, and the fugitive slaves were penniless, and eager to receive wages on their own account. Mr. Benjamin Drew, who made a tour of investigation among these people in 1855, and wrote down the narratives of more than a hundred colored refugees, gives testimony to show that in some quarters at least, as in the vicinity of Colchester, Dresden and Dawn, the number of laborers was not equal to the demand, and that the negroes readily found employment.[595] It was not to be expected that the field-hands and house-servants of the South could work to the best advantage in their new surroundings; a gentleman of Windsor told Mr. Drew that immigrants whose experience in agricultural pursuits had been gained in Pennsylvania and other free states were more capable and reliable than those coming directly to Canada from Southern bondage.[596] But such was the disposition of the white people in different parts of Canada, and such the demand for laborers in this developing section, that the Canada Anti-Slavery Society could say of the refugees, in its Second Report (1853): "The true principle is now to assume that every man, unless disabled by sickness, can support himself and his family after he has obtained steady employment. All that able-bodied men and women require is a fair chance, friendly advice and a little encouragement, perhaps a little assistance at first. Those who are really willing to work can procure employment in a short time after their arrival."[597]
The fact that there were large tracts of good land in the portion of Canada accessible to the fugitive was a fortunate circumstance, for the desire to possess and cultivate their own land was wide-spread among the escaped slaves. This eagerness drew many of them into the Canadian wilderness, there to cut out little farms for themselves, and live the life of pioneers. The extensive tract known as the Queen's Bush, lying southwest of Toronto and stretching away to Lake Huron, was early penetrated by refugees. William Jackson, one of the first colored settlers in this region, says that he entered it in 1846, when scarcely any one was to be found there, that other fugitive slaves soon followed in considerable numbers and cleared the land, and that in less than two years as many as fifty families had located there. The land proved to be good, was well timbered with hard wood, and farms of from fifty to a hundred acres in extent were soon put in cultivation.[598] In some other parts of Canada the same tendency to spread into the outlying districts and secure small holdings appeared among the colored people. Mr. Peter Wright, the reeve of the town of Colchester, noted this fact, and attributed the clearance of much land for cultivation to fugitive slaves.[599] That such land did not always remain in the possession of this class of pioneers was due to their ignorance of the forms of conveyancing, and doubtless sometimes to the sharp practices of unscrupulous whites.[600]
REV. THEODORE PARKER,
A LEADING MEMBER OF THE VIGILANCE COMMITTEE OF BOSTON.